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A comfort blanket for the managerial class
Ryan Broderick writes about a long, apocalyptic post by an AI CEO named Matt Shumer:
the âartificial general intelligence will destroy the worldâ narrative is a marketing strategy. Itâs the same thing we heard about crypto and metaverse, both of which were meant to mimic how we think the release of the iPhone feltâŠ.
The opening of Shumerâs big AI essay is actually not about AI at all. Itâs actually about COVID, specifically the creeping fear that, well, something big was happening. âThink back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us werenât paying close attention,â he wrote. âI think weâre in the âthis seems overblownâ phase of something much, much bigger than COVID.â Which is, beyond AI, the defining philosophy of Silicon Valley â or, even, America â in the 2020s. That you are, simply, not aware of something important that is about to happen, a sort of COVID phantom pain. And once you see it, youâll start seeing it everywhere. âYou are running out time,â âyou will be left behind,â âyou are not noticing whatâs happening.â The only thing Big Tech is selling us is their own unprocessed trauma back to us. Itâs not a revolution. Itâs a comfort blanket for a managerial class that still canât fathom that all their tech and wealth couldnât protect them from the pandemic.
The Problem With Measuring Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime (And Everything Else)
Ryan Broderick (second item):
⊠even something like the Super Bowl, arguably the last television broadcast everyone in America sits down to watch together (in theory) is not immune from the larger shift towards non-linear short-form internet content. And, as weâve seen almost every month since we started compiling metrics for platforms like YouTube and Twitch, the most viral language west of Chinaâs Great Firewall is not English, but Spanish.
The Horse Girl Fandom Is Melting Down Over Armpits: âArmpits are an advancing contender in the crowded field of ânon-censored and ironic ways to be a pervert onlineâŠ.. â â Ryan Broderick (third item at the link)
Pam Bondi did the Guardians of Pedophilia proud today.
As far as I can see, the only thing the national Democratic Party is good for is sending text messages asking me for donations. You want my fucking money? Do something!
Minnie in a raincoat is giving a vibe like Ralph wearing the bunny suit in âA Christmas Story.â
<script src="https://cdn.micro.blog/quoteback.js"></script>Minnie has a raincoat now.
Watched: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms S1E1, The Hedge Knight A pleasant surprise! I thought I had enough of Game of Thrones, but this tale of Ser Dunk, a threadbare, sad-sack knight, is good-looking, light and enjoyable. We will keep watching.
We need a new amendment: The right to bear phones
The nationâs founders worried that if the state had a monopoly on weapons, its citizens could be oppressed. Their answer was the Second Amendment. Now that our phones are the primary weapons of todayâs information war, we should be as zealous about our right to bear phones as we are about our right to bear arms. To adopt the language of Second Amendment enthusiasts, perhaps the only thing that can eventually stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a camera.